NEW DELHI: A former Amnesty International Board member Ravi Nair started “The South Asia Human Rights Documentary Center” to further Amnesty’s aims in India. His work has not gone unnoticed.
In a special to the “New York Times” (10-19-92) it was reported that;
Ravi Nair knew he was getting under the Government’s skin when he returned home one night last March and found his tiny apartment ransacked.
“They didn’t take anything” he said. “Nothing not my Walkman not my watch A. thief would have picked all that up. But they went through every piece of paper I filed an official complaint but nothing happened.
Nairs papers his files his computer records the names he knows and the events he chronicles are increasingly worrisome to the Indian Government because Nair runs an independent human rights group.
“As accounts of human rights abuses torture rapes deaths in custody the formation of death squads by Indias army and police increase and reports of such abuses spill from organizations like Amnesty International and Asia Watch the Government has reacted angrily and defensively. It accuses the foreign human rights groups of being politically motivated and of interfering in the country’s internal affairs.
In response to those complaints Nair the slightly built perennially bemused and gregarious director of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center here has brought the scrutiny of human rights advocates home to roost.
And with equal determination the govt. has begun scrutinizing Nair and his work. For the Govt. more than its image is at stake: some European diplomats say aid to India is being reviewed in light of the country’s human rights record.
Nair who is 38 years old has weathered his own trials at the hands of India’s authorities including a year in prison in the late 1970s. In the 1980s he worked for Amnesty International in India and London before returning to New Delhi to open the documentation center in 1989.
“I do think” said Nair who until last year was a member of. Amnesty International’s board “that it’s much more effective to have initial organizations like this to complement the work of Organizations like Amnesty We started off as a documentation center just recording instances of violations of human rights but now we are slowly beginning to launch campaigns for human-rights Vic human-rights victims.”
“All these years the Government has gotten away with blue murder” Nair said rocking forward in his wire-frame chair. “The West thought we were this great democracy. Nobody realized it was a false front like a town in a western movie. No one ever said anything about the fact that the courts are not able to provide justice that the police had become a law unto themselves.
In the United States this year the House of Representatives voted for the first time to cut aid to India in a foreign operations bill. In conference with the Senate the action was reduced to a warning to New Delhi in return for a pledge that Senate committee hearings would be held in the New Year on the Kashmir crisis and the Kashmiris demand for a plebiscite ordered by United Nations resolutions in 1947 and 1948.
Over the last several years as insurgencies intensified in Kashmir and the Punjab in the northwest and Assam in the northeast Indias security forces have sought with rising ferocity to contain and suppress terrorism and guerrilla movements. And increasingly the activities of the security forces have drawn the attention of Western human rights groups and foreign governments including that of the United States which have accused the Government of systematic violations of basic human rights. Repeated instances of killings torture kidnapping impoundment without trial and rape committed by the security forces have been documented and reported.
Insurgencies in the Punjab and Kashmir continue to claim thousands of lives of the 4900 people killed in the Punjab last year2700 were civilians with another 1900 people described as militants and 300 security personnel according to Government figures provided to Indias newspapers. In Kashmir 1044 civilians lost their lives in the guerrilla war with 1300 guerrillas and 149 army and police officials dying in the year that ended Aug.31.
Even in parts of India where no guerrilla wars or secessionist struggles are being waged India’s security forces have come under criticism Amnesty International in a report released last spring accused the police of mistreating Suspects in custody.
Indias Government has greeted such reports with growing anger and frustration particularly because foreign-aid donors have expressed alarm about the extent of reported abuses. Finally last month the Government announced that it would form a National Human Rights Commission that would have “appropriate powers for looking into the wide range of issues pertaining to human rights.”
“Reports of an independent Indian Human Rights Commission” Gadgil said “Will be an effective answer to the distorted versions given by such Western organizations.”
And Prime Minister P.V Narasimha Rao in announcing his intention to form the commission said the army in regions like Kashmir was fighting terrorism and secessionism and that accusation against it were unfounded.” “Those dealing with the menace courageously in extremely difficult circumstances are falsely condemned for violation of human rights” he said.
Nair said that such comments betray the Governments intentions
“It’s clear that the Government is responding to international criticism” he said. “To Amnesty International Asia Watch and US. Congressional criticism. It seeks to circumvent international scrutiny by stating they have adequate national institutions to investigate these charges.”
Indias press and intellectuals with the exception of a handful of iconoclasts largely trail in the wake of the Governments attitudes toward human rights: that foreign groups have no business judging India and that apart from a few aberrations India as the world’s largest democracy has a good record on human rights.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 6, 1992
