World Sikh News, in its efforts to apprise its readers of the world view of the area has obtained the 1992 U.S. the situation in the Punjab and Department of State report on Human Rights practices in India, We will be publishing the excerpts from the report in Serialized form for our readers. This is the Sixth and final installment.
Section 4: Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental
Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights Independent Indian human rights organizations are active and vocal. They include the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, the South Asia Human Rights Documentation center, Citizens for Democracy, and numerous regional organizations. All these groups send out teams to study specific allegations of human rights abuses and publish reports on their findings, which are often highly critical of government authorities, All of India, including Kashmir and Punjab, is open to investigation by Indian civil liberties groups. Following a Chief Minister’s conference on human rights in September, the Government established a ministerial level subcommittee to prepare authorizing legislation for a national human rights commission. The power of this commission and its scope of work remained unclear.
The central Government is generally tolerant of dissent within India. There have been, however, numerous instances of human rights monitors arrested or targeted for police harassment. Among the most notable was that involving Justice Ajit Singh Bains, a 70 year old former High Court justice and human rights monitor, who was arrested after delivering a speech that authorities said was seditious because it advocated an independent Sikh homeland. Jus tice Bains was released on bail in August after being held over 4 months under the TADA. In February two Gujarat human rights monitors were arrested under the National Security Act for protesting oppression of tribal. Other Indian human rights monitors have received threatening anonymous phone calls and have had their offices searched by government agents. Ram Singh Biling, a journalist and Punjabi human rights activist, was taken from a bus by uniformed gunmen on January 3 and was never heard from again. Although several local residents complied affidavits stating that Biling was abducted by police, the state government denied that he was ever arrested, Hirdar Nath Wanchoo, a labor lawyer and Kashmirn human rights activist, was killed by unidentified gunmen on December 5. The Government, denying any involvement in his death, turned the case over to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The central Government is sensitive about international allegations of human rights violations. Amnesty International (Al), unlike some other international human rights groups, has requested specific government authorization to send research teams to Kashmir, Punjab, and several other states. A high level delegation from Al visited New Delhi in November to discuss these requests. Government officials stated afterwards that they were not opposed “in principle” to a research visit and hinted at an invitation to visit Punjab after further discussions but ruled out such a visit to Kashmir.
Section 5: Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion, Language, or Social Status
The traditional caste system as well as differences of race, religion, and language severely divide Indian society despite laws designed to prevent discrimination, Sporadic violence occurred throughout the year based on these differences, as well as long standing Hindu Muslim tensions, Despite several provisions in the Constitution promising equality before the law and prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender, the family, marriage, and inheritance laws of several of India’s religious communities manifest legally sanctioned gender discrimination. In recent years, changes have been made in personal, criminal, and labor laws governing women, including the Dowry Prohibition Act, the Equal Remuneration Act, the Prevention of Immoral Traffic Act, and the Sati (Widow Burning) Prevention Act Nonetheless deeply rooted traditions, often tied to religious or social practice, continue to contribute to uneven enforcement of these laws, particularly in the countryside.
Existing laws relating to asset and land ownership give women little control over land use, retention, or sale. The Hindu Succession Act provides equal inheritance nights for Hindu women, although in practice married daughters are seldom given a share in parental property. Islamic personal law, while recognizing the right to in heritance of both sons and daughters, specifies that a daughter’s share should be only one half of a son’s. Under the tribal land system notably in Bihar, tribal women do not have the night to own land; the practice of putting women to death there as “witches” is closely linked to the denial of property rights. Female bondage, forced prostitution, and child marriage remain common in parts of Indian society, Child prostitute on is rampant in the larger urban areas. In Bombay alone, there are approximately 100,000 prostitutes, many of them minors, held in bondage at brothels. Redetermination tests (amniocentesis) are widely used, resulting in a disproportionate number of abortions of female fetuses and, in turn, resulting in discontinuation of such tests in many states. Coupled with a marked disparity between mortality rates of male versus female infants in the 05 age group, this has resulted in the unusually low ratio in the Indian population of 929 females per 1,000 males (the ratio varies considerably among states). Parents often give priority in both health care and nutrition to male infants over females.
Women’s rights groups point out that the burden of providing an adequate dowry for girls is one factor in making female births less desirable to the parents, Human rights groups estimate that at least 10,000 cases of female infanticide occur each year throughout India, primarily in the poorer areas of the countryside.
Women’s rights groups challenge the claim that “dowry deaths” (usually by bumming) of young married women result from their inability to meet material demands from their husband’s families. They contend that in sufficient dowry is often used as an excuse for socially condoned violence against named women. Dowry crimes are a complex issue involving attitudes of parents to ward daughters, the social and economic status of women, laws that do not adequately stipulate investigation and enforcement procedures, and the failure of police to enforce existing laws.
The overwhelming majority of female workers are employed in agriculture, where work is not adequately regulated by labor laws and where contractors customarily pay women lower wages than those fixed by the states.
According to an Indian government study, which is borne out by press reporting, violence against women—including molestation, rape (including while in police custody), kidnaping, and wife murder (“dowry deaths”)}—has increased over the past decade. Whether this is due to more re porting, a higher incidence, or a combination of both is unknown. Government reports put the total number of dowry deaths during 1991 at 5,157, up about 7 percent from 1990, By law, every un natural death of a woman in the first 7 years of marriage must be investigated by the police and a magistrate. In Delhi, however, of 329 cases of dowry death between 1989 and 1991 only 45 have come to trial, resulting in 3 convictions. A member of the Indian police serving on the Union Public Service Commission stated in 1990 that about 95 percent of registered cases of dowry death end in acquittal because corrupt police and medical officers tamper with crucial evidence.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 2, 1993
