Recent reports on the Punjab by the Reuters and the Associated Press appearing in the New York Times (112341127) and other newspapers, blaming every incident on the Sikh nationalists, raise many disturbing questions about the source of these reports as well as the accuracy and fairness in Reporting:

  1. These reports have originated with the Press Trust of India and United News India, which invariably parrot official stories of misinformation and distortion with anti Sikh slant to delegitimize the Sikhs’ struggle for independence.
  2. Any journalist with elementary knowledge about India should know that these kind of random shootings in the market place and pulling down of innocent people from buses and trains, is not the work of Sikh nationalists but of hired mercenaries who have been staging these incidents to defame and slander the Sikh nation all over the world and particularly in the western media and academia.
  3. If western news agencies have merely to repeat the official stories, one wonders why they waste their resources on maintaining their Offices in New Delhi, rather than sitting in their ivory towers in London or New York.
  4. Why don’t they venture to go to the remote villages of Punjab and Kashmir, where India’s paramilitary forces (known among the folks as criminals in uniforms or Khaki Dogs) have unleashed state terrorism against innocent people whose voices do not reach the western world? In many villages, it is hard to find a young man between the ages of 18 and 35. Thousands have been killed in fake encounters, or have been detained in India’s Nazi torture chambers, and or missing.
  5. Ina country, which is notorious for staged incidents, fake encounters, mock hijackings, and extrajudicial killings, and which has refused to permit Amnesty International to visit and investigate flagrant human rights abuses in Punjab and Kashmir, one would have expected western news agencies to show some caution and imagination instead of blaming every incident on the Sikh nationalists.
  6. Some Indian newspapers and political circles have blamed these incidents on Pakistani intelligence agencies, in retaliation of Indian intelligence agencies’ operations in Pakistan, and also in response to India’s atrocities against the Muslims in Kashmir and rest of India.
  7. Others have blamed them on the Indian intelligence agencies, staging these incidents to create a smoke screen to hide increasing police brutalities murder, torture, and gang rape highlighted during the recent human rights hearings in the U.S. Congress and Amnesty International reports.
  8. Yet others believe that these incidents have been engineered by Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress Party (out of power in New Delhi) through notorious Red Brigades and Black Cats (consisting of hardcore criminals released from jails and provided with weapons to terrorize innocent people in Punjab). That these incidents represent a cryptic message to the new Prime Minister, Mr. Chander Shekhar, from ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, as to who will call the shots in this brute power struggle in New Delhi, between the high caste Hindu ruling clans.
  9. It is a well-known fact that there has been a rapid rise in common crimes, violence, and officially blessed criminal gangs throughout India. Yet India’s official Statistics, released to the western news agencies, instantly blame every incident in Punjab on the Sikh nationalists. Common folks, who are endowed with much less knowledge and commonsense than the journalists representing Reuters and Associated Press, are aware of this reality of official misinformation and distortion.
  10. While we know why India is doing what it is doing, it is hard to understand why some western journalists are becoming instruments of this official propaganda aimed at the cultural genocide of the Sikh nation all over the world. Don’t they care about their own credibility? Have they forgotten their professional responsibility of “informed and objective” reporting, or their commitment to “accuracy and fairness” in the media? Gurcharan Singh, Ph.D. Executive Director (Human Rights Observer P.O.Box 988 JAF New York, NY 10116)

Article extracted from this publication >> December 21, 1990