By: Sam Singh, Pittsburgh, PA
During the visit to New Delhi by John Malott, by Principal Deputy assistant secretary for South Asia in U, S., the official spokesman of the ministry of external affairs of the Government of India told the press On May 20 that India’s commitment to human rights is second to none. This statement, before it could be believed, has to be tested in accordance with 1LF.Stone’s “principle” that all governments must be considered a bunch of liars unless they prove to the contrary.
In the case of India, there is an obvious need to apply this “principle” every time the Government makes an assertion on human rights. Its record is gory, surpassing in cruelties the kind committed by the authoritarian regimes in South America of the recent past. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Asia Watch, and other Indian organization provide conclusive evidence that human nights continue to be violated with impunity, its army, paramilitary forces and police have never ceased committing numbing atrocities, Murder, rape, torture, arson, and extortion without regard to age or sex are the common forms. But the Government Continues to deny them, nonetheless pretending they occur only once in a while.
For that reason, a glimpse of how the Government of India complies with the U.N. requirements relating to human rights is provided by A.G.Noorani, ex solicitor general of India and now a frequent contributor to the Economic and Political weekly on human rights.
- It is a “fact that to large segments of our society, justice is denied and not merely because of economic and social reasons. Justice is denied partly because the judicial process is slow, sluggish, expensive and yet inadequate, and is more over not free from the taints of corruption. But the greatest culprit is the executive, the law enforcing agencies are simply not conscious of the concept of human rights generally, the bureaucrats are insensitive, the politicians in power are indifferent if not cynical.
2,In filing the periodic report with the U.N: on its observance of two international Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Government of India’s delay i$ gross and consistent. India satisfied the Covenants only on March 27, 1979, with serious reservations to reduce the scope of the Covenant of Civil and Political Rights to that of restrictions on fundamental rights in the Indian Constitution.
- The second report, due in 1985, was submitted only on July 12, 1989, after seven reminders had been sent to the Government of India. The third report first due on July 9, 1990, was extended’ the deadline to March 31, 1992, the report is not filed as yet.
- When the first report was examined in 1984 by the Human Rights Committee of the U.N., Certain shortcomings were noticed, K.Parasaran, then Indian Attorney General, promised to rectify them. Seven years later when the second report was examined on March 2627, 1991, the Committee pointed out to G.Ramaswamy, then attorney general, that the deficiencies of the first report continued to persist.
The above facts alone provide a sufficient proof that the Government of India shows the least concern for human rights. Adding to it the evidence compiled by the human rights organization, the terror let loose by the Government of India since 1983 (starting in Assam) is no different from what is going on in Bosnia except that in India the victims have no means to defend themselves legally or physically. More than a thousand people have been picked up from their homes in the state of Punjab alone every year for several years, interrogated, tortured, murdered and later declared to have been killed in ‘encounters.’ Dead bodies are usually disposed of without being returned to the relatives. The magnitude of the monstrosities are so nauseating that even outsiders, especially the Western countries could not stomach what their diplomats observed in India. Overriding their trade considerations, they linked their economic aid to the human rights record. Demur the Indian regime did, but feeling pressure, it immediately proceeded to legally craft a ‘commission’ to look after human rights; IT is likely to be as “impartial’ as reporting by the Indian Radio and Television. The real aim behind this intended facade seems to be not to lose economic aid and at the same time continue terrorizing dissidents demanding Justice, They will be either terrorized into submission or “cleansed out’ in “encounters.”
The regime has been corrupted absolutely and cannot reform itself. It has been busy trying to create facts out of fiction as did Goebbels in World War IL. On the basis of what has been going on in India, a British newspaper recently remarked that Indians chose a Goonda Raj for British Raj. Imperious and insulting as this remark is, the regime has been called what it is.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 16, 1993
