In a world dominated by irresistible pulls and pressures, it is not easy to do justice but to do what is right is all the more difficult. Immigration Judge Dana Keener has precisely done what is both just and right in granting political asylum to Harbhajan Singh, a Sikh who feared torture and may be death in India for his political and religious beliefs. If deported, Mr. Singh would certainly be killed either in the dreaded police torture chambers or through the prevailing practice of fake encounters.
The decision to grant the asylum is even more significant in view of the State department’s letter asserting that “Sikhs are not persecuted in India for ethnic, religious or political reasons”. The letter also states that “there is no basis to the claims that the government of India engages in acts of persecution or a policy of discrimination against members of the Sikh community”.
The Judge, however, rightly ignored State department’s letter as it did not say a word beyond repeating the stock explanations given by the Indian Consulates to every charge of religious persecution or political discrimination. The State Department officials, for reasons best known to them, blindly endorse whatever the Indian government says and dismiss even the most overwhelming evidence to the contrary as pure fabrication by those who, they allege are trying to balkanize India.
They have no value for Amnesty International’s findings like “forty years after Independence, the people (Sikhs particularly) of India have been subjected to laws which violate all principles of natural justice”. They disregard investigative reports of Human Rights groups headed by former Supreme Court judges that unambiguously blame the Indian government for aiding and abetting genocidal massacres of the Sikhs. They disbelieve U.S. Congressmen who are denied permission to go to Punjab. They find nothing wrong in the totalitarian ban on the entry of foreign journalists or the continued army occupation of the Punjab for over three years now. It does not interest them that a Gestapo Police Chief has been instructed to disregard the judicial process and kill Sikhs as per his own “hit lists”.
Interestingly, the State Department uses different yardsticks for similar situations. While it rejects Soviet denials of the persecution of the Jews, it accepts Soviet protégé, India’s similar statements as Gospel’s truth. Somehow, it is of no consequence to them that ever since the Sikhs launched their struggle five years ago, not a single Sikh has been convicted by any judicial court for the so called “terrorist” activities despite such draconian laws as put the onus of proving his innocence on the accused himself without even giving him the right to know his accuser or the prosecution witness. The trumped up cases against the Sikhs are not subjected to judicial scrutiny but are “decided” at isolated places near the Pakistan border through summary executions by the firing squads of the Security Forces.
In India climate for Sikhs, particularly for the youth, is shockingly hostile. They live under a perpetual shadow of death that stares at them through the barrels of trigger-happy policemen. Their only hope is to escape into lands that value human rights and respect human life. The grant of political asylum to a Sikh in the United States has come as a refreshing breeze of new hope for the beleaguered Sikhs. Hopefully, it will serve to reverse the earlier trend of relying solely on the State Department’s habitual endorsement of Indian government’s misleading propaganda. Whatever the compulsions of the State department, America the land of promise and hope where the celebrated Statue of Liberty beckons the bruised and the besieged of the world’ has got to hold high the torch of human dignity and freedom. Abdication of this historical role will narrow the straits of the free world which will, inevitably, diminish the freedom of each one of its people.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 31, 1987
