CHANDIGARH: In a memorandum to U.N. secretary-general, three human rights groups Movement against State Repression, Punjab Human Rights Organization and Punjab Peoples Union of Civil Liberties have sought its intervention to put an end to the unending genocide of Sikhs by the Indian state, The groups said that the latest target of the Indian security forces were militants’ close relations totally unconnected with the allegations of violence.
Ata joint press conference here, the group leaders, Ajit Singh Bains, Inderjit Singh Jaiji, Mohinderjit Singh Sethi, Baljit Kaur and others, released the letter and answered newsmen’s questions. But the Indian media, except for the Hindu of Madras and the Ajit of Jalandhar, blacked out the proceedings.
From the statements issued by the police and other authorities, the memorandum calculated the number of those killed at about 1 lakh since 1984. No enquiries had been held by the Indian state despite repeated representations by human rights groups. The Indian prime minister and other authorities did not even acknowledge receipt of the letters sent by human rights groups. The Punjab chief minister publicly attacked human rights groups. The Indian government was not expected to undertake a proper count of those killed.
It was therefore necessary for the U.N. to take up detailed census of genocide of the Sikhs involving millions of people. There were precedents where the U.N, took cognizance of such genocide and provided relief to the affected communities. Such a headcount was necessary to put an end to the Indian armed campaign as also to recompense to the sufferers.
The groups said that the Indian central government encouraged the killings in Punjab. The lists of the police targets were prepared by the central intelligence agencies working directly under the Indian prime minister’s house and the summary executions were undertaken by certain chosen police officers in Punjab. Close relations of the militants unconnected with politics altogether were the latest targets. Thousands of young Sikhs had mysteriously disappeared from their homes. In some cases, the dead bodies had been fished Out by farmers from the running Canals and a section of the media carried out on the spot investigations. In many cases, the Rajasthan police stated that unaccounted for bodies had been flowing from Punjab to that state.
In numerous cases, the police claimed that those in its custody had been killed by militants as the police personnel were taking the suspects for “recovery of arms.” Only the militants got killed in these supposed encounters. About 400’such deaths had occurred during the past two years alone, the human rights groups added.
A notable feature of the killings of young Sikhs by the Indian police was to pick them up from their homes, put them to grueling interrogation and if they died dump the bodies in canals, That was what had happened to Jagdev Singh Khudian, a member of Indian parliament, Gurdev Singh Kaonke, a former chief of Akal Takhat and lawyer Kulwant Singh, his wife and their minor son. To protest against the killings of Kulwant Singh and his family and to demand a judicial enquiry, the high court for the states of Punjab and Haryana had been on strike for more than 40 days now; The Indian Government had failed to respond to the demand by thousands of advocates.
The human rights groups estimated the number of those killed in the 1984 operation Blue Star and in the aftermath of Mrs.Gandhi’s killing at 20,000. As many as 600700 Sikhs travelling by trains were killed by Hindu mobs, according to a belated assessment made by the then minister for Indian railways. The anti-Sikh genocide of November 1984 affected several towns such as Bokaro, Daltaganj, Hazaribagh, Dhanbad, Ranchi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Ratlam, Rewa, Sonepat and Panipat, apart from Delhi. Thousands of truck drivers and other members of the crew were killed as their vehicles were destroyed by the Indian government engineered mob actions.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 26, 1993
