Pakistan Embassy in New Delhi has exposed India’s gruesome practice of murdering Sikhs and then describing them as Pakistani nationals killed while illegally crossing over to India through the Punjab border. The press note issued by the Embassy says that despite over fifty requests to release the identity and other details of all such so called ‘Pakistani nationals’, Indian authorities have failed to supply even a single name to the Embassy. The sources close to the Embassy also revealed that no Pakistani national is reported as missing with any police station in Pakistan.
Whereas no Pakistani is listed as missing, hundreds of Sikhs are daily disappearing. The inescapable conclusion is that the Border Security Force in complicity with the General Reserve Police Force hauls up innocent Sikhs from Punjab villages, bundle them to the border and gun them down in cold blooded butchery. The practice follows a now familiar pattern. The boys are picked up from their homes and taken to the C.R.P.F. posts. When the parents along with Panchayat members go there to enquire about the charges against their sons, they are invariably told that none was under detention there. When pressed they merely say that the old unit has been transferred from there and they have no information about where it has been posted. All enquiries to locate the C.R.P.F. personnel who had arrested the boys fall on deaf ears. That is the last the parents hear about their beloved sons.
The arrested boys are never produced in any court and they never return to their homes. Surely, they meet their tragic end somewhere near the border where “NeoNazi” executioners dispose of their bodies after listing them as unknown intruders from Pakistan. Indian newspapers gloatingly flash all such news on their front pages in bold headlines because in their crooked reckoning every Pakistanis an enemy and every non Hindu Indian is a convert to be redeemed back to Hinduism. It is all the same to them whether the unfortunate victims are Sikhs or Muslims from Pakistan. For them there is no difference between a Sikh and a Pakistani.
Yet there are selfish renegades like Gen. Jagjit Singh Arora who continue deceiving themselves and others of their clan into believing and preaching that Sikhs are perfectly safe in India. They are like the foolish pigeon who on seeing the cat closes his eyes and keeps smugly believing that the cat is gone. Their suicidal blindness to reality is doubly dangerous for the Sikhs. Firsty, it makes them sitting ducks to be killed for the sport of the Security Forces. Secondly, makes the outside world oblivious of their horrendous fate, especially in the context of a total ban on the entry of foreign journalists in Punjab.
Pakistani Embassy’s press note has raised questions that point to grim answers. Only the utterly naive will now contend the reality of the State terrorism let loose against the Sikhs. How can any self respectiveing Sikh subscribe to the contrived myth of Indian unity and integrity in such a hostile climate? And’ how long can the world stand as an idle spectator and watch the grisly spectacle of a religious minority being systematically exterminated?
The free world owes it to itself and to its commitment to the cause of liberty to effectively respond to the plight of Sikhs in India. It must instantly recognize Sikh youngmen battling against fascist State terrorism as Soldiers of Conscience and it must forthwith suspend all trade with India because India, today, is nothing but an obverse of South Africa. Pious expressions of concern and routine censure by Human Rights groups or Amnesty International have no meaning in the context of the communal fanatics ruling India who pay only lip service to the noble sentiments of the civilized people.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 10, 1987
